The EU’s Fourth Anti-Money Laundering Directive (AMLD) will be one of the key topics to be discussed at this year’s Finance Malta conference entitled ‘Malta’s Financial Services Industry –Taking the Next Quantum Leap’.
The AMLD was an attempt to combat the laundering of money from criminal activities and to counter the financing of terrorist activities. However, it is fraught with difficulties.
Juanita Bencini, president of The Institute of Financial Services Practitioners and a partner at KPMG said: “Never in the history of EU AML directives have we had a situation where a directive is proposed to be amended before it is even transposed into national law next month. As regulators and practitioners, trying to operationalise a directive which we know a priori may be subject to change will result in a lot of uncertainty and confusion.”
Ms Bencini, who will be introducing and moderating the afternoon session on ‘Business Operations and the Fourth European Union AML Directive’, added: “The session will provide insight into the operational implications of the Fourth AMLD and seek to answer some of the questions that practitioners are asking as they look to implement the directive.”
Together with Ms Bencini the discussion panel will include Alfred Zammit, deputy director of FIAU, Ariane Azzopardi, senior manager at Alter Domus, and Manfred Galdes, partner at ARQ Group.
This year, Finance Malta’s conference will also address other issues and topics, such as the implications and opportunities brought about by Brexit and the implications of this development within the context of the Commonwealth, Fintech, Crowdfunding, Securitisation, Blockchain, as well as a number of other global and domestic industry-related developments.
The conference starts with a pre-conference networking event on Wednesday and a full-day conference on Thursday at the Hilton Conference Centre.